1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a motional video browsing system, and more particularly to a motional video browsing data structure based upon relations between characters, including a fixed relation or changing relations over time.
2. Discussion of Related Art
Generally, a conventional method for watching a movie or drama is by directly receiving a video signal transmitted from a broadcasting station and viewing the video in a real time, or viewing the movie in a cinema. However, demand for re-view of a specific portion in the whole contents of a motional video has been gradually increasing, and with the development of various kinds of video media and technology, a motional video browsing system has been introduced in which a movie, drama or a specific portion therein can be re-viewed in response to the demand of a user.
A reproduction technique for the selected a section of a video has been introduced by Goldberg in U.S. Pat. No. 5,696,905 in which all kinds of video materials are classified in the groups, e.g. a form group, an index group, a medium group, a division group, an object group and a display group. The object and display groups display information (name of the object, position on the screen, and numerical information on the section where the object appears) for any characters or things. Only if a user selects a specific object on the table of the object group, the selected object can be displayed.
Another reproduction technique has been introduced by Reimer in U.S. Pat. No. 5,696,905 with additional information table in which additional information acquired before and after the production of video material or during the production thereof is recorded. For the preparation of the table, the positions at which characters appear, the positions at which the casts of the characters appear, the positions at which the stage properties appear and so on are recorded. If the user selects an object from the additional information table, the user""s desired scene is reproduced, and if the user""s desired object is a stage property, the information (e.g. production company, price) on the stage property is displayed. Furthermore, the user can be connected with the production/sale company of the corresponding stage property on the network.
Still other reproduction techniques by Abecassis in U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,664,046 and 5,696,896 proposes a video section map in which the information on each section of video materials is recorded. On the video section map, the information such as the degree of violence, the degree of suggestion, the degree of importance of contents, characters positions, and the degree of difficulty in understanding, of each section of the video materials is displayed. If the user inputs the degree of preference to a corresponding item of the video section map, only the user""s desired section in the video materials is reproduced.
As discussed above, the conventional browsing methods provide items arranged simply without any relation to the objects appearing in the movie or drama, based upon the selection of the user.
However, the contents of the movie or drama generally builds around the relations between the characters. According to the development of events, the relations between the characters may not change from beginning to the end of the story or may continuously vary. Moreover, since one or more characters relate to a specific character in the movie or drama, the conventional arrangement type browsing method substantially fails to provide an accurate understanding of the story of the movie or drama to the user.
Therefore, to easily browse the contents of the movie or drama on the basis of the relations between the characters who play significant roles in developing a story of the movie or drama, a novel motional video browsing method which can solve the problems which appear in the conventional character arrangement type browsing method should be suggested.
Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to solve at least the problems and disadvantages of the related art.
An object of the present invention is to provide a video browsing data structure and browsing method based upon relations between characters in which the contents of the motional video are displayed as the relations between the characters.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a video browsing data structure and browsing method based upon the relations between characters in which a user can view a selected portion of a movie or drama by selecting a specific relation between two characters.
Still another object of the present invention is to provide a video browsing data structure and browsing method based upon relations between characters in which the relations between a specific character and a plurality of characters are displayed and a user can view a selected portion of a movie or drama by selecting a specific relation between two characters.
A further object of the present invention is to provide a video browsing data structure and browsing method based upon relations between characters in which fixed relations between the characters and variations of relations between a specific character and other characters are displayed, and a user can view a selected portion of a movie or drama by selecting a specific relation variation between two characters.
Additional advantages, objects, and features of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and in part will become apparent to those having ordinary skill in the art upon examination of the following or may be learned from practice of the invention. The objects and advantages of the invention may be realized and attained as particularly pointed out in the appended claims.
To achieve the objects and in accordance with the purposes of the invention, as embodied and broadly described herein, a video browsing data structure based upon relations between characters includes character relation information by which the relations between the characters of a motional video are displayed, and information indicating a corresponding motion video section and a representative scene of the events in the development of the contents in the relations between the characters are displayed.
According to another embodiment of the present invention, a video browsing method based upon relations between characters includes the steps of: forming browsing data with which a graph indicating relations between leading characters and other characters of a motional video is established; and establishing the position information of sections corresponding to the relations and the position information of the representative scene representative of the sections; displaying the graph indicating the relations between the characters on the motional video; and if at least one relation is selected from the displayed graph, displaying the representative scene of the sections existing within the selected character relation on the basis of the position information.